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| This is my first year with an in ground garden. This spot used to be shady but my neighbors cut down trees and I thought it would be a great place to have a big veggie garden. I have a raised garden too where I've grown great tomatoes in the past. I feel like I 'm running into lots of issues this year because of crazy hot/cold weather and perhaps because I'm not familiar with this new plot of land. So, perhaps you experts out there can tell me what is going on here? You can see that some of the leaves are yellow. Some plants are stunted and some are stunted AND brown. Some plants are growing GREAT. I've even got some pepper plants that are not so great. Some facts: I'm in MD, zone 7b, montgomery county. It's been raining a lot. The weather has been crazy even past Mother's day we had a near freeze. The plot of land was prepared with LeafGro and manure. #1 Sweet 100: Brown on the bottom but tomatoes on the top. #2 Sweet 100 close up #3 Marglobe with brown/yellow #4 Stunted #5 Overview where you can see the good tomatoes, the dead ones, stunted and even my sickly peppers
#6 You can see the dead tomato plant in the center of the frame
#7 Overview again |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by suncitylinda 9ASoCal INland (My Page) on Wed, Jun 12, 13 at 15:23
| I am not an expert but unless leaf grow is a granular fertilizer, it is possible your plants are starving. You might try posting a close up of the yellow leaves on the pepper plants. The first two tomato plants look a lot like mite damage. Spider mites are tiny but visible if you shake the leaves over a white paper plate. Tomato Russet Mites are not visible with the naked eye but leave a brownish bronzing under the leaves. |
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| I forget that it's a regional product this is from the website: Leafgro® is a superior quality compost used extensively by the landscape industry and homeowners as a source of humus for soil improvement. I'll fertilize them today How do I treat the mites?? |
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| I'm not an expert either but it may have to do with the soil. If it was shaded for years then suddenly gets full sun, the dirt may need some serious help. I would add a heaping amount of Miracle Grow Garden soil and water well. --I grew sweet 100s this year and added this soil. I planted 9 plants and I must say, I'm sick of tomatoes! I'm giving them away to everyone that will take them. But I have also used Vigoro veggie food. I think its the soil. It's lacking nutrients. ...just my guess though. Good luck with whatever you try and keep us posted. |
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| How long have the plants been in the ground? Plants can suffer from transplantation and from adjusting to new growing conditions for a while after setting out. Jim |
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| It looks to me like your tomato plants might have been damaged by an herbicide. They also look like they might have blight, but I'm not an expert on tomato diseases. Sorry. |
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| How much rain have you had? They can also be stunted and yellowing when they are drowning. Been there done that. |
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| I have to agree that the problem is primarily your soil. That is some really bad looking soil in the pics - poor color, poor tilth, poor drainage, probably mineral depleted, perhaps even toxic, etc. Any chance those trees they removed were walnuts or ash? Whether those pathetic looking plants can be salvaged is very doubtful. The place to start IMO is with a soil test, a professional one from the local county ag extension office. In the mean time heavy feeding with a fast acting totally balanced quick fix liquid - your choice. If they were mine I'd pull them and focus on fixing the soil this year so it would be usable next year. But if you want to try to save them mound the soil up around all of them, bury most all the exposed stems in the hope of new root development and better drainage, strip off all the damaged leaves and the fruit and any blooms and let them focus on new growth if possible. Good luck. Dave |
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| *sigh* & I feel like crying. :( My poor tomatoes and my poor soil. We've had tons of rain and are expecting more storms tonight. I pulled the dead plants and the roots were definitely water logged and rotted (not sure if that is a good description). I don't know what kind of trees they were. They removed 6 or 7 of them. What are some suggestions for a fast acting fertilizer? Name brands? I'll go out and buy some tomorrow. |
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- Posted by Donna.in.Sask 2b (My Page) on Thu, Jun 13, 13 at 0:15
| Fertilizer isn't going to help. You need to do something about your soil. |
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| Just by looking at those pictures , I can tell with 90% certainty: POOR GROWING CONDITIONS: In one picture I see a big crack in the bed. It tells me several thing : (1) clay soil (2) had been left unwatered for a good while, then it dried up and cracked. (3) The state of the plants also confirm that: They have not had a chance to REALLY grow to a decent size. Tomatoes, squash ... tend to flower early and small size when find themselves in a poor growing situation by staying dwarf , with minimum possible number of leaves. |
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| Yes, I'm going to have to say soil also. I'm not too far from you in southern PG county and have had the same weather. My tomatoes are all very healthy and between 2-4' tall at this point, despite being set out late. So it is probably not the weather. At least, not the weather alone. If your soil is poor draining the weather could factor in more. Your first two pictures look like you picked a transplant to buy that was already flowering, maybe? Sometimes when the plants sit in tiny pots for too long they sort of give up, set a tiny tomato or two and then basically stop growing, even if you put them into a garden full of good soil. So that could be the problem with the first plant. My guess is that you did not add enough Leafpro, and possibly that you did not distribute it enough into the soil. It takes quite a bit of organic matter to make a difference. |
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| What are some suggestions for a fast acting fertilizer? Name brands? I'll go out and buy some tomorrow. Miracle Grow is a very obvious brand name. There are many of them but it will have to be a synthetic. Organics won't work in that soil. But as I said above, it is a last ditch effort and likely won't be successful. Why not just give up on these poor plants and put them out of their misery? Then focus on massive soil fixing instead. Dave |
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- Posted by suncitylinda 9A (My Page) on Thu, Jun 13, 13 at 10:49
| AFBQ - So sorry! It is hard to work on planting a garden and then have it tank. Maybe you can purchase a few tomatos and peppers and grow them in containers this year? |
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| Isn't it possible the plants can be temporally removed, put in a container, Soil amended and then replant? I had a Brown Derby, that was not doing all that well in one location, I removed the plant and moved it to an area that all the other maters were dong great in. The plant picked right back up in less than a day. I have clay soil too but huge amounts of compost added as well as some lime to break up the clay. Tomatoes there looks like a rain forest even the red brandywine has numerous tomatoes on it now. Gary |
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| Digging up the plants and amending the soil would be a great idea. I could do that. I thought I did enough when I made the garden bed because I spent DAYS working on it. So excited. Now not so much. Digidirt, the reason I don;t want to give up is because I've spent so much time and money on this that I just can't see myself pulling them up. It's heartbreaking. :( It's not a crack in the soil you see, it's the old tree and bush roots that popped up when I was tilling. I've been working to cutting them off (which I did after the pic was taken). If anything it's too wet and not enough drainage (as I've now learned). |
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| See if you can find out what kind of trees they were. If they were walnuts or some varieties of ash and the roots have spread into this area then this ground will never be vegetable productive as both produce soil toxic juglone. Dave |
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| nut trees = juglone. Soil is trash for your life-time. |
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| Thankfully, they were not ask or walnut or a nut tree. They were maples or something similar. This is what i did. I dug up a Black Krim, Mortgage Lifter, sweet 100, and a chipilin pepper and replanted them in the good garden I have (where I'm not having anywhere near these problems). I hope they do well & survive. |
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| I am in Baltimore County, and I feel your pain on the soil issue! We recently moved here, so we are just starting improving the soil. For now, I'm using a combination of containers, small raised beds, and one or two "in-ground" plants which are actually high planted in mounds on top of the topsoil. All are doing great despite the weather. In the mean time, I'm doing some top-down improvement of the area I will garden in next year. Top-down is key for our clay because digging down more than 4-5 inches only creates a basin of clay filled well drained soil...recipe for a sodden mess. I laid wet newspaper and cardboard over my whole plot, then piled on a few inches of compost and shredded leaves, and finally mulched the whole area heavily with straw and fine composted bark mulch. I did this late last fall and this year we have tons of earthworms and dramatically different soil texture to a depth of 6 inches or more. Even if you do nothing else, just covering that spot with something (burlap, wet cardboard, leaves, whatever) will get the worms there, and they are good at what they do! My husband teases that I have a veggie garden and a "dirt garden" and I work just as hard on both. So true! Good luck and hope you keep us updated on how it's going over there, neighbor. |
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Just a quick update: We had a major storm here and I went out to see what was going on with the garden. These are the pictures I took of the garden when it's raining. There was a LOT of run off from the neighbors to my house. It's a river! 
These are about 40 mins after the rain stopped: Lots of standing water.
So basically, I've got poor soil and poor drainage. |
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| And no telling what all may be in that run-off...like weed killers. You'll have to build some sort of dike/dam to divert all that run off around the garden somehow once you make the area salvageable. Dave |
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- Posted by SunshineZone7 none (My Page) on Thu, Jun 13, 13 at 21:13
| i say get a truckload of leafgro and build up that soil at least 6 to 8 inches. |
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| Wow, yet again we had the exact same problem! We put in a fairly large french drain along the fence line and it helped a great deal. It was overwhelmed a bit by all the rainfall at the peak of that storm, but it still drained everything down pretty quickly. Our gutters also empty to it, so it was handling a LOT of water. Chemical runoff was also one of my first thoughts! |
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| I'm in Anne Arundel by the coast. I'm willing to bet the foundational problems are poor drainage, ph of 5.5 or less. You had even more rain than us, maybe 8" the last week? Also, I hate to bash leafgro, but the more I use, the more signs of herbicide damage I see in my tomatoes. |
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- Posted by SunshineZone7 none (My Page) on Fri, Jun 14, 13 at 15:09
| hi jeffwul.....we are also in anne arundel county. i looked into it and apparently a third party lab tests the leafrgro. but i also had herbicide damage so i was curious. then i realized that some of my plants on the deck getting hardened off had herbicide damage and they were not grown in leafgro...so i cant blame the leafgro. |
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| To me, it looks like they are growing in soil that is a bit compact or at least the pictures don't look like well worked soil. On top of that, there is no mulch to protect the plants from mud splashing on them during heavy rains (disease will be a comin'). And I'm sure the cold does not help, as tomatoes are tropical plants... Hope this helps. p.s. The nutrient issue mentioned by others is probably legitimate concern too. |
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| Do you guys think that compost tea would help the soil (in the fall once I harvest what I can). I also love the top to bottom fix, which I will do! IT's a great solution. Also I've transplanted some of the plants into containers. I hope they make it. I did a basic soil test and it read the soil at 6.5. I will have to get a more comprehensive one done but for now it's what i have. |
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- Posted by nubiegardener none (My Page) on Fri, Jun 14, 13 at 17:26
| Phytophthora. Search it up. It's a horrible viral condition that occurs when you have poor drainage as you do. I built my raised bed where water collects and found out that some of my plants were extremely stunted, yellow and diseased. I pulled one up and the roots were brown and very unhealthy. If you pull one out and look at the roots, you'll definitely be able to tell. But judging from your first picture of the tomato, phytophthora is definitely a possibility. |
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